


Heartlines

by GirlDressedInBlack



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26561821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlDressedInBlack/pseuds/GirlDressedInBlack
Summary: The Mistress walks down the same roads that the Doctor has in the hopes that it will reunite them again.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 4
Collections: The Florence Collection





	Heartlines

When the Mistress comes to in the pile of overgrowth her lips taste bitter with the aftermath of unfelt laughter and cold, both words and hearts.

The Doctor isn't there.

It disappoints her but it doesn't surprise her.

Instead of dwelling on it she breathes out and in, listens for the thudding of cybermen through the woods.

She feels the frantic, confused heartbeats in her chest slow just a little when she hears nothing aside from the nature she'd expect if this was a real woodland and not just another level on a spaceship.

She wanders, dazedly, back to the colony and finds the buildings empty and burned. It takes a few moments for her memory to come back to her and she finds the emergency escape the villagers had gone through.

It's dusty and cold, colder than the cultivated forest and colder than the bombsite that she is leaving.

She follows the path down, goes towards the source.

The Time Lady feels stiff and slightly like she's crumbling at the edges like an old manuscript.

She thinks to herself would be about right for me to crumble at this age and moves on from the thought, leaving it unspoken in the scrapings of her body through the dust.

Her mouth doesn't feel ready to speak but she's hopeful, even in her state, that she would be able to take down maybe ten or twenty cybermen before dying again.

An errant part of her hopes that the fighting is over and that it took too long for her body to come out of the long slog of repairing every single cell.

It's like herself to take away all hope and leave the victim still living.

* * *

The Mistress stumbles against metal walls, hearing the click of her heels as she listens still for the inevitable stomping.

That stomping is distant but she hears it come closer in frenzied thoughts which drive her to take trips through vents and uninhabited rooms, crouched low and almost breathing, such a human exhibition of fear.

* * *

Somehow, in what the Mistress, were she less sure of her own capability compared to others, might have called a miracle, she finds her way to the bay with the escape pods again.

It'd been so long since she'd last been there but it's just as easy to steal the small craft as when she'd first seen them through different eyes.

* * *

There's little she can do now but follow the trails of him, her occasionally, them, through this slice of time she finds herself stranded in.

It takes a lot of backroom bartering with secrets, knowledge and the odd little bit of physical violence or closeness (depending on her mood and the safety of each option) to get the things she wants and to the places she wants to go.

The path she takes is odd, dipping in and out of the Doctor's faces, pinballing across the universe in pursuit of nothing in particular but the familiarity of knowing that they'd walked here too, breathed the air, ate the food.

There are rivers and birds, stars, blood and scars which cut through landscape too.

She becomes fluent in a few more languages that she hadn't known, remembers some she had forgotten from misuse.

Once she thinks she sees her in the crowd and stops short, hearts pulling her in that direction even as she turns away from the tall woman and catches a commercial flight to a planet in the middle of nowhere to cool her brain.

* * *

There's a bench on this planet, in front of a small pond stocked with magenta ribbons of fish. She sits on it and rubs her face between her hands.

She knows that it was her, the Doctor, her Doctor, just as she knows that the time wasn't right.

She had followed her and of course that meant that she would see her eventually but there was something so undoing, so raw, in seeing her again, seeing who she was before she even knew her.

She wonders if the Doctor knows about that her, more sharp and alive than they'd felt to her for oh so long.

The Mistress only caught a glimpse of her but she tasted of power and strength and willpower, of taking the first action, of doing everything for the capability to win.

Her eyes were dark and the Mistress thinks of them, the instinct in them, shining.

She pretends that she doesn't feel her presence as the Doctor comes up behind her, tardis groaning slightly.

The Mistress turns, drinking in the other woman's being.

The Doctor smiles a little, confused. She almost looks disturbed. Her voice is still gentle, warm, comforting in ways that the Mistress thought she had forgotten.

"You know me?" She says.

The Mistress doesn't think that she can find her voice but still the words find themselves falling easily from her lips as she grimaces.

"You will one day. Thought that you would be used to that right now- you're travelling enough, aren't you?" The Time Lady asks.

"Most people don't run from someone who doesn't know them yet." She says, the silent 'so why did you?' clear.

The Mistress smiles.

"We have a complex history far in your future, I think." She says sadly.

The Doctor is quiet for a moment and then frowns.

"You've seen my memories, you didn't see me, right?" She asks, sighing.

Missy nods.

"At least it's a good heads up about what I can expect at the end of this..." The Doctor mutters and then reaches down to the Mistress, hand extended.

"You might as well show me." She says.

The Mistress knows that she shouldn't but she also knows that the Doctor knows that she shouldn't ask.

The Mistress takes her hand.


End file.
